Game Over
by Emerald Embers
Summary: Four vignettes on life after Venger returns to the side of good. Rated for mild bad language and very mild slash.


Game Over  
  


by Emerald Embers

Rated PG for mild bad language.

Non-profit fan-fiction. The defiling of children's TV is not earning me any money, and I mean no copyright infringements or offence.

  


[Diana]

We're out. In the real world. We're home.

And... not a day has passed.

All of us checked our clothes - the same as when we entered the ride. The next set of children queued up to get on the ride we were on, and five minutes later, they got off the ride. No confusion on their faces. No checking pockets, hell, no checking _skin_ to make sure it's all still there.

Bobby, Sheila and Eric all ran off in search of their respective families the moment they could, though I knew Bobby was missing Uni already. He's still only a kid; his shoulders were slumped and his run slightly heavier than it should have been. Hank in the meantime asked me to walk with him to the fast-food stand for a hot dog, something he'd been meaning to get with the money in his back pocket for...

How long for, really? Minutes? Or years?

We both feel... shaky. How are we going to explain to our parents why we've aged years mentally - maybe not physically, as Sheila's voice went up a pitch (it had been deepening while we were in the Realm) and our scars have disappeared - in the space of a fairground ride?

Hank smiles a little at me before handing over an ice-cream. "I'd had change," he explained. Smooth move, Hank. A few more ice-creams and I might keep in touch with you even after the realm. 

Both of us survey the area around us, wondering what to do next.

"Well," I began, after taking a thoughtful lick of the ice-cream. I'd forgotten how good these tasted. "I know I don't need to worry about muggers anymore."

  


~*~*~

  


[Shadow Demon]

A room without doors.

That's as close to describing what it feels like as I can get - like being trapped in a room without doors, windows, or cracks. Only that I wasn't in a room. I was in the big, wide universe, free to do whatever I wanted. That's what made it all the worse. 

I _was_ free to do whatever I wanted - but thanks to sweet, bitter irony, my freedom came from losing the only thing I _had_ ever wanted.

I'm trapped in an overflowing well of hypocritical goodwill and I _despise_ it. There is no balance between good and evil anymore. Evil had been what I lived - what _we_ lived for. Now he contributes to the fairytale lives of others, and he suffers for it. He goes out and provides heroic rescues, helps in the killing of evildoers, and all the while is reminded that he is the one who made these rescues and killings necessary in the first place.

It was fairly obvious they wanted rid of me from the moment Venger turned. Venger was their example of how someone could come back from evil with a good heart. Having me around was a reminder that they could not redeem everyone. Besides, their Venger had lost much of his memory, making him a better toy to play with. What a wonderful story for the masses, the evildoer who went back to fix the evils he had committed. 

Evils he wasn't even aware he had committed anymore.

I, of course, was therefore an impracticality. An abomination who had no desire to be redeemed, and who might trigger off Venger's memories 'before he was ready'. They would rather show him his past piece by piece, like a slow form of torture.

And so they sent me away. No specific place, they simply told me to leave. What did they expect me to do? Come back to them some day and apologise for being a bad little boy?

No. And now I will live alone, I will live in the corners, I will remind the innocent children of tomorrow why they are so happy. It's because people like me are impotent. We have no power to do anything to them anymore.

My 'freedom' from my master's service was the biggest chain they could have hung around my neck.

  


~*~*~

  


[Venger]

Travelling through the land and returning things to the way they should be has been painful since the moment of my awakening. Looking at all the suffering I inflicted upon people as my abominable former self is worse than the nightmares I've endured every night for weeks now. Even in my sleep I rarely find respite. But I have looked on what I have inflicted on the world, and I deserve _all_ the pain, and all the tortures thrown in my path. I deserve _worse_. I was murderous and cruel, and I stole everything in sight that was not rightfully mine.

I was evil in its truest, library-book definition.

My father helps me through the day, but there is no-one to help me through the night. And yet, every once in a while, usually in the middle of my worst nightmares, there's a soothing force. Nothing quite physical, nothing obvious. I wake up sharply, to a dream in a dream, and I turn over and feel... comforted. Fingers of air and wind on my cheeks, smoothing back sweat-soaked hair - my hair, clinging to any surface it touches like slime - and a soft voice, telling me to calm down. A tendril of shadow curling around my leg and pressing up against my body, but it can't do anything, doesn't have the form to do anything more than make its presence known. Nothing gives it an exact shape save for two bright orbs, possibly eyes, that remain fixed on me as though I could disappear any second.

In the arms of this darkness, I feel as though all the evil around me and in me no longer matters. I feel as though evil and good stops existing, and the only thing deserving any definition is this place and time, because it is _right_. 

And when the dream ends, and I wake up to nothing more than my father's voice telling me where we must head today, I wish all the more that I had never been born.

  


~*~*~

  


[Tiamat]

So, so sleepy. Damn humans and wizards, chasing around after orcs. Good food, those orcs, good meat being wasted by magic and spears.

May consider hibernating for a few centuries, find a nice warm place in a volcano. Got so cold up in the mountains last time I went to sleep, don't feel like having to wake up every few years to make sure my bones haven't frozen stiff.

Smell of something intruding on my home. Slightly familiar, but not extremely. Can't be a wizard then, or I'd place the smell. Memorise all wizard scents, they're tricky buggers. Can't be a peasant either, they all stink the same.

"Tiamat, I need your help." Oh bloody God. Another bloody damn tiresome cursed demon or spirit, expecting me to know everything just because I'm a few millennia more experienced than they are.

"Trouble me not," I growl back at him. Fire head that time. Feel like using Ice next time, barely ever use that one and its got a rather nice edge to it.

"Tiamat, I want to die, but I need a body first."

"Go to a graveyard then," I hiss back at him with Ice. Nice edge. _Very_ nice edge. "Plenty of bodies there."

"But I don't know how to get _into_ it. Can you help?"

"No," I growl, hissing back at him. "Find a wizard. Venger's free these days." There's a slightly choked sound and the smell disappears from my cave, so there's just good old me and my treasure. I'll miss it, and bet the bloody humans will try and steal it in my absence.

Ah well, I can always get it back later.

  


The End


End file.
